Seating Charts

At the beginning of this school year, I kept strict seating charts in my classes. Now I don't. Here's what I used to do, and what I do now.

To keep strict seating charts, I built a spreadsheet to automatically label a chart for each class using information in my rosters, with seniors highlighted. The "Print" tab shows the chart from the teacher's perspective, for taking daily attendance. The other tabs show the charts from the students' perspective, for them to find their seats while looking at a screen display of the chart. I built in a randomize function that allows me to shuffle seats on the spot. I've used this, for example, to shuffle seats for a test. If you like, you may copy the spreadsheet and modify it for your own use. Leave a comment with your contact information so that I can tell you how to access the undocumented functionality. (For example, student ID's can be turned off by deleting the content of cell H1 in the "Print" spreadsheet.)

As my teaching style has evolved from mostly lecture to mostly group work, I no longer keep a strict seating chart. I allow students to self-select into learning groups, which works pretty well in my classroom environment. They enjoy sitting and working together in clumps, instead of in neatly arranged rows all facing forward.

To support the "mostly group work" teaching and learning style, I now use seating charts built from photographs of each learning group, with seniors highlighted in bold. This allows me to take attendance quickly while supporting the "clumpy" sitting arrangements preferred by the students. I can still use the spreadsheet if I need to shuffle students for a test.

Lecture: Optional

I've been trying an experiment in my physics classes, making lecture optional. Students who want the lecture on a topic come up to the front of the classroom, and students who would rather learn the material from the textbook read and study it together in groups in the back of the room while I am lecturing up front.

Lecture gets a bad rap, but results in my classroom are clear: lecture is effective compared to unguided learning from the textbook in small groups. The optional-lecture experiment was one piece of a comprehensive lesson plan that also included guided inquiry, active learning, scaffolded problem-solving, and repetition. Within that context, lecture was effective.

Conclusion: Lecture can be enjoyed in moderation as one part of a healthy, balanced diet of learning strategies.